What happened on April Fool's Day had the New York Post issuing an apology on Sunday. Through Twitter, the News Organization explained why their mobile app had gone bad over the weekend. An unknown attacker seemed to have gained control over the app's back-end architecture and initiated a series of push notifications that included nonsensical messages, including the lyrics of a song. "Please accept our apologies," the Post tweeted.

An app behaving strangely

If you have the New York Post's mobile app installed, then you probably noticed that the app was behaving strangely on April 1. It started pushing out weird messages that included one saluting President Donald Trump in a German Nazi style "Heil." According to Fortune, other posts in the notifications included cryptic messages, vague remarks and words that even seemed religious.

The app continued to stream lyrics from a Nirvana song, "Come As You Are," featured on their 1991 album, "Nevermind."

Not long after the app ended the slurry of erratic updates, the New York Post issued a notification saying that their system had been compromised and they they were already working to resolve the issue. News organizations have long been a favorite target for hackers, so the New York Post's app hack should not come as a complete surprise. That it happened on an April Fool's Day could be a source of confusion, as people might dismiss the messages as an extreme stunt or part of a prank. The tabloid reader's app usually pushes notifications alerting readers of major events. It generally lets the Post's readers stay updated on breaking news and to access the print edition on their mobile.

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News media hacking

Included in the list of news media hacks are the hacking attempts of the New York Times and other reporters by a Russian hacker group in 2013. The media reported that journalists' emails were compromised during the attempt. Other targets of the 2013 attacks were the Washington Post's website, which was immediately shut down after the news media learned of the breach. Earlier in January, the BBC Twitter account posted a fake breaking news update that apparently was the result of a Twitter hack.

The push alert system for our mobile app was compromised this evening. Please accept our apologies.

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